Short-lived happiness for Zen 3? Intel Rocket Lake-S Core i9-11900K QS: up to 7% lead over the Ryzen 7 5800X and up to 33% over the Core i9-10900K; Core i9-11900 ES2 similar to 9900K/10700K ^↺

Single-core performance has traditionally been Intel's stronghold even till the recent Comet Lake generation. AMD's Zen 3 Vermeer changed all that with even the entry-level Ryzen 5 5600X beating the Core i9-10900K in most single-core tests and games. AMD's new-found hegemony, however, may be short-lived.

Core i9-11900K QS vs. Core i9-10900K and Ryzen 7 5800X

A few benchmark results of an alleged Core i9-11900K qualifying sample (QS) seem to have made their way online. According to numbers leaked by ChipHell forum member popboy139, the Core i9-11900K QS's single-core scores apparently give a tough run to its 8-core AMD competitor the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X.

We previously reported on the possibility of a Core i9-11900K attaining a 5 GHz boost and 700+ points in CPU-Z single. It looks like this Core i9-11900K QS could be that chip after all. According to popboy139's post, the Core i9-11900K QS scores 710 points in CPU-Z single, 1700 points in Cinebench R23 single, and 660 points in Cinebench R20 single.

In comparison, a Core i9-10900K scores 534 in CPU-Z single, 1,324 in Cinebench R23, and 532 points in Cinebench R20 single (numbers from @3DCenter_org). This makes the Core i9-11900K QS663 24-33% faster than the Comet Lake Core i9-10900K in single-core workloads.

Taking the Ryzen 7 5800X's scores (663 - CPU-Z single, 1,596-Cinebench R23 single, and 625 - Cinebench R20 single) into account, we find that this Rocket Lake-S QS part is about 5-7% faster depending on the test.

As opposed to engineering samples, qualifying samples come very close to the retail specifications. Therefore, we can expect similar or possibly slightly better scores in the retail units. The OP also notes that (from translation provided by @hrb0755) this sample was being run at a very high voltage and that the BIOS of the board was not perfect.

Also being indicated is that the DeepCool Xuanbing 400 cooler is installed on this sample without any mounting mechanism and a low-quality thermal paste was used. Even then the Core i9-11900K QS recorded less than 95 °C while consuming 160 W, which essentially makes it a cooler chip than the Core i9-10900K at similar conditions.

The OP notes that the Rocket Lake-S sample consumes less power than the Core i9-10900K while running AVX2 AIDA64 tests but consumes more while running AVX512 workloads. Still, cooling the Core i9-11900K seems to be easier than the Core i9-10900K despite the higher power consumption due to its larger die size.